The Household Spirit by Tod Wodicka Read Free Book Online Page A

left marks. Her skin irritated easily. “The worst thing is, I’m small but I’m not
cute
,” she once told him. “I’m small the way bugs are small.”
    Other children had been cruel to her. Likely they still were. But even she wouldn’t let that take the blame for the inscrutable, constant costume changes of her moods. “Hey,” she said, finally, asthey approached her mother’s house. “Hey.” She squeezed Howie’s arm. “I’m sorry, Dad. I love you.”
    Pulling his car out of his ex-wife’s driveway, Howie honked three times, something he only ever did with her and only because when his daughter was little she’d absolutely insisted on it. Three honks.
    Dad!
    Dad!
    Dad!
    His daughter was still little. She waved good-bye, playful now, happy, a brand-new boot comically gloving each of her hands. She raised them above her head and waggled them, then bent them slowly, back and forth, like the antennae of an insect someone had just stepped on.

4
    “M essage. One,” said the telephone robot. “Friday. Eleven. Four. Tee. One. P. M.”
    BEEEEP!
    “Hi, this is Emily Phane from next door. Peter’s granddaughter. Mr. Jeffries, I’m really sorry to bother you, but I’m calling because
—no I’m calling him now, I’m actually on the phone right now, I’m
[mostly unintelligible]—”
    BEEEEP!
    “Message. Two. Friday. Eleven. Four. Tee. Four. P.M.”
    BEEEEP!
    “Sorry. Emily Phane again, from next door. From Boston. I know this is unusual but could you please call me back as soon as you get this? It’s an emergency. I mean, I hope it’s not an emergency, but—here, my number is six one seven, eight three eight, five five six one. Please call. Even the middle of the night, whenever you get this message. That’s area code six one seven, five five five, five five six one. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks. Bye!”
    BEEEEP!
    “Message. Three. Friday. Eleven. Four. Tee. Nine. P. M.”
    “…”
    BEEEEP.
    “End. Of. Messages.”
    —
    Nearly three years ago, on a Friday at 11:58 p.m., Howie stood waiting for his telephone to ring again. He had been sitting down but that began to feel inappropriate. The phone was more likely to cooperate if he was standing.
    It would ring on Saturday, he thought. In two minutes. He was in his kitchen and had been all evening, through all nine unanswered phone calls and two messages. In the same way one might obsessively peel back a bandage and poke a wound, Howie wanted badly for the phone to ring again. He knew what he was when the phone was ringing. He was a coward. When it wasn’t, he actually entertained the idea of answering it were it to ring again. Why not? Then it would ring again and he would remember. He was paralyzed. He could not answer, just as he knew that he would never be able to call Emily Phane back, knew it even as he was writing down her number in his address book, circling it in red marker, twice, as if to differentiate it from all the other less important numbers he also was not ever going to call.
EMILY EMERGENCY 617-555-5561.
    Or, as she said, perhaps there wasn’t an emergency. What then? Why had she been calling? How did she even have his number? He was confounded.
    Message one was the first time that he had ever heard Emily’s voice up close, certainly the first time she had ever been in his house. His kitchen.
His kitchen table
. Emily, for the most part, sounded like she was supposed to.
    Telephones that you expect to ring look markedly different from telephones you do not ever expect to ring. Howie played the messages again. BEEEEP! Then once again.
    The unintelligible part on the first message concerned him. There was someone there with Emily, a male someone. Was he the emergency? That did not make sense. If not an emergency, the male was certainly an asshole, possibly even a
fucking
asshole, this muchHowie gathered because he thought that he could hear Emily, her hand momentarily over the receiver, calling him exactly that. Back in